If any of you are like me and like to stay updated with gaming news, then you have probably heard of a game called HATRED. It’s causing quite a stir in the online community and if you watch its game play trailer, you can see why. Essentially, a game where the player is a mass murderer killing civilians on the street with different weapons [that is the goal of the game].
Warning
There is an excessive amount of gore, violence, swearing, and many other things that can cause nausea and psychotic breakdowns while questioning the thought process and overall purpose of the existence of humanity. It’d be better for all of us if you did not watch the video. However, I know that you will want to watch it even more after reading that description so I have provided a link for it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytdEYapPXdY
It’s not exactly a very controversial game to gamers because, to be honest, we’re used to it by now. In fact, the game has shown mass appeal on the Steam Greenlight community, where independent games are put up to be voted for by players [who take deep interest in knowing where their next game is coming from]. A staggering 93% voted “Yes please” when asked if they would like to see the game hit the online stores.
[socialpoll id=”2244001″]
There has been much talk of it in gaming media; websites and YouTube channels were posting reactions and articles about the game being “brutal”, “the most violent game in the world” and accusations and assumptions about the company have been bouncing all over the internet and some news outlets were even asking if HATRED had finally gone too far.
Their questions were promptly answered by all parties involved; the company chose to respond, in particular, to the accusations labelling them “neo-nazis” with the opinions of everyone in their small team stating their position on neo-nazism and racism in general. They ended with a very assuring remark saying that “Here, everybody dies.”
The Steam Company, however, did not take kindly to the negative press about the game and promptly took it down from the Greenlight voting page, only saying that it broke community guidelines. A bold move, surprising many of the fans, seeing as it ranked #7 in the top 100 games on the Greenlight and also because games like Manhunt and Postal 2 are available to purchase on Steam (If you are not aware of these games, good. Read about them but do not play them. I did and now I can never walk into a toilet without fearing for my life).
In an amazing, yet predictable turn of events, Steam restored the game to its rightful place on the Greenlight voting page after only 2 short days, presumably filled with heated arguments between Steam and the supporters of the game.
But is HATRED too much? Has it gone too far? As someone who uses video games as a stress reliever, all I can say is that the more violent it is, the better I’d feel. Rest assured, if I’m killing people in a video game, I’m definitely not going to be doing it in real life (that has nothing to do with the fact that I have no access to guns and munitions).Nevertheless, it’s interesting to see how the general public distinguishes between acceptable and unacceptable violence in media – one can argue that games like GTA also feature the option of killing civilians.
This is something I bring up in all conversations about violence in media: if all it took for a person to crack was playing a violent video game, then he was already driving down that road when he started playing. Anything at that point could’ve nudged him overboard. Correlation does not necessarily mean causation.
Would you play this game? If you would like to pitch into this heated discussion, please drop a comment below: